A Connoisseur Flies Over Victoria Falls and has a Video to Prove it!
The guests and members of the Connoisseurs Club at the social held at Santosh and Vaishali Desai’s house in Manvel, south of Pearland.
By Jawahar Malhotra
MANVEL, TX: At first sight, you wouldn’t think that mild-mannered, bespectacled Santosh Desai had an adventuresome streak in him for extreme tourism. After all, the 54 year-old physician and Administrative Consultant for the Dallas County and Harris County Hospital Systems had a fairly typical professional lifestyle, ensconced in a recent home in Manvel, 4 miles south of Pearland. He and his wife Vaishali – both immigrated to the US in 2003 from Baroda – also own the Beauty and Beyond Skin Spa in Houston’s Museum District.
But Santosh and two of his buddies from Houston got the hankering to visit some out-of-the-way places, and this past July, they took off for Zambia (where Santosh has an old friend) and South Africa. It was their first trip to the Dark Continent during the region’s winter time and they were not sure what to expect.
Connoisseurs Club co-founder Atul Vir introduces the topic – a tour of South Africa and Zambia – that Santosh Desai (left) was going to present.
Santosh expanded on his two week trip at his home on Sunday evening, September 10, to the quarterly meeting of the Connoisseurs Club, a 5 year-old social group that ties each event with a chance to learn something new from a member’s experience, whatever it may be or a topic researched out, as in last quarter’s meeting. The other constant at the CC is that each member brings a bottle of their favorite – or unusual – bottle of Scotch whisky to sample, and a dish for snacks or dinner that follows.
“Being in Zambia or South Africa is not for the lone tourist,” Desai said as he ran through a series of slides from his trip. “Both places are fairly dangerous and corrupt and you have to be on your guard.” He showed pictures from Cape Town, Johannesburg and a national park before returning to Zambia for the final leg of the journey, where he walked (with the trainer beside him) a domesticated cheetah on a leash and then two young lions on leashes through a wild terrain. His trip ended after a visit to the majestic and world-famous Victoria Falls where a statue of the 19th century Christian missionary and explorer David Livingstone who first found them greets visitors.
“Those were the most marvelous moments of my trip,” recalled Desai, still enthusiastic even two months later. “I would go back just to walk those beautiful animals again,” he added “and to take in the view of Victoria Falls from the sky.”
The Falls brought out the thrill-seeking, adventuresome side of Desai. Strapped to the back of a microlite motorbike with a Paraglider attached to the top, he was able to soar like a bird, 10,000 ft above the Falls and around the river basin and watch the steam rise up from waterfall, while a Go-Pro camera attached to one wing captured every moment of his flight. He showed the 30-minute video clip to the roughly 35 people who came for the meeting.
It was scary to look at, but Desai was exuberant about his once-in-a-lifetime experience of extreme tourism. “They make you sign a consent form that they are not responsible for what may happen,” he said, “and though you are up there without a parachute, you just forget about it as you take in the breathtaking scenery.”